This ends this series, 'A Broken Machine', its prequel will be here soon.

The Last

Beacon had had a difficult time finding this one, the last target he would find before Silver Wisp intervened. With Earth sitting in orbit like a sullen star, with every ship grounded and every signal silenced he knew he was running out of time.

In’sepecant, Senior Armsman, last known post the Seven Shades Corsair Class, accomplice to the murder of Eru, retired and currently hiding on 320.93.471.07

Not hiding anymore. In fact, the creature had practically shouted from the rooftops that he was here after years of successful hiding. That's fine, his knife still worked and a century of work had not taken the edge of his desire for revenge. He didn’t bother to hide, the people knew that the human God of Death was walking amongst them. After his early work, the military and police locked the doors and prayed to their goddess. He barely even noticed as the population fled. The rules were clear that interfering with his mission carried a heavy price.

The town was nothing special, a once-prosperous hub of commerce hurled back in time to agrarian subsistence. They probably had a King. Hastily rebuilt infrastructure, water and wind now running the planet. Beacon grinned. He had been pissed with the sentence that had been imposed. He had wanted dead. He had wanted blood and fire until he realised how angry the Quorum were. The enemy didn’t get to die in fire and heroics. They got to bleed out, to watch those they loved to die from simple causes. To sit in the wreckage of their world while a glaring red eye sat over their home and never let them forget why they had been cursed. He cheerfully admitted that Silver Wisp was probably a bigger bastard than he was, and he knew how bad that was.

You could only call it a homestead. It looked like it had been built well, built before the energy had run out. Built by someone who knew that hell was coming. Someone that had known that he was one of the damned. The walls were solid, the gate was tall and heavily built from ship steel.

And open. Curious.

The path was empty, his sensors read the landscape as heavily-armed and…disconnected. Nothing wanted to kill him. It was an odd feeling but it slowed his pace and he put his knife away. That left only a talker. Some of them got like that, usually after the first hour. How sorry they were, how they didn’t mean to drop eight-hundred kilotonnes of heavy ordnance on some children. One Captain had cried that he was only obeying orders. That had added a remarkably long time to his pain. He hadn’t waited until the miserable creature was dead before he took his face and left him to bleed out, not even worth the blade. Some just stood there and nodded, the nightmare finally turning up. An end to the sweating nights and broken dreams. Those he killed quickly, but they both knew that the meeting ended in death. Some were even grateful.

Today would end it. The Quorum had told him that this was the last, the last crewman he was allowed to sentence. He had made his way over a thousand planets and over a century of human time to track and kill one hundred and eleven thousand murderers. It had been easier when they had stayed in their damn ships. He had hit such big numbers in the beginning…thousands in a day if he got to the reactor and cooked them slowly. Good times.

The air was clear, he could detect one lifeform. The sky was darkening to a deep silver as the human shield blocked the planet. Banned from even seeing the stars they had betrayed. The more he thought about it, and that was practically his only purpose, the more he thought humans were bigger bastards than people realised. Not the Shant, obviously, they had got to meet the sharp end but the rest of the oblivious galaxy.

And him of course, literally the sharp end.

The door was open, swinging lightly in the breeze. A child's toy had been left to keep it open. Subtle. Unfortunately, he had an eidetic memory, every record of every human child huddling under a bed as the air burned never got better. Never went away. If he was human he would have said he was mad. He was grateful that he had resigned from the human race before this started, otherwise justice would never have been done.

He pushed open the door.

In a chair beside the embers of a fire sat a huddled creature. It was wearing the remains of a uniform and seemed to be shivering. It looked at the door and seemed confused.

Beacon realised he still wore full camo and silently dropped it.

In’sepecant, Senior Armsman?

“Ha, you found me! Took you long enough. What happened? Stopped to kill a few random civilians on the way? I'm dying, nothing you can do to me. An hour or two won’t make a difference.”

Beacon pulled up a seat. “Good. I’m not in a hurry. You are the last crewman alive, so I guess you get a medal. I could never find out why you were on the ship, you hid your records well. A corvette, not exactly my first choice of target.” He thought for a moment, “Well, definitely not my second.”

The creature cackled, “And that's where you were wrong!” It coughed to itself loudly and then resumed, “I was responsible for small arms. Small calibre, anti-personnel, anything like that… we shot your people like it was a festival. We took bets and I won.” It grinned up at him, the ragged scales showing, “I could always hit the small ones. It was easy when you worked out how they ran. And now you are here, full of revenge and your knife. I’m not frightened of your blade, hu-mn. My doctor says I will die in a matter of hours anyway and I wanted to spit in your face*”*

Beacon stayed silent for a moment and then spoke, “You think you were the worst? You are nothing compared to some of those I killed. You are sad, hiding for your entire life under our bloody moon. I am here to collect the price for your sins, you know them better than I.

I don’t give forgiveness and I am not here to dispute your evil. I am here to kill you. My task is simple and inevitable.”

He reached into his belt and produced a very small blade, “However I can introduce you to new concepts of time and pain. To admit to me that you hunted my children, and you being my last target I feel this will take a while and you can tell me all about what you did.”

The screaming began. It lasted a lot longer than his doctor had estimated and ended with him skinless and bleeding out. Beacon played the sound of the children that the creature had murdered as it died.

---------

Silver Wisp watched from orbit as the last murderer fell to the Beacon. His shattered self would soon reunite and look to the future.

However. One last task. Once the creature had died he summoned Beacon and they faced each other for the first and last time. He nodded and said nothing.

Beacon smiled. “Fine. I’ll say it. End me. This is over.

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In the dark, orbiting a now lonely sun was a strange artefact. A thing of horror, left to the honour the ghosts of a destroyed world and the vengeance of man, silently spinning in a forgotten orbit. It was a crude sphere of faces and limbs frozen in time and left to forever stare blankly towards the sun. A wretched monument to murder as the guilty were left forever circling the smouldering remains of their crime for eternity.

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